Saturday, May 3, 2014

The Lush Kitchen

This weekend I was lucky enough to be invited down to Poole in Dorset for a very special Lush experience. As many of you might know, Lush is one of my favourite bath and body brands, so I was super excited to be invited, but also to hear about the launch of their new 'Lush Kitchen'.

The Lush Kitchen

Filling Bottles

The Kitchen is designed as a small-scale version of the Lush factory; producing one or two different products daily that are available to buy for a limited time only through their website. Whether they are old, discontinued favourites or sneak peeks of new products in the pipeline, it allows Lush's online customers to order special, small-batch products the very same day they are being made...

I got taken on a little tour of the factory on Friday, although most of the staff had gone home for the bank holiday by the time I arrived (they take their time-off seriously at Lush!) I got to see how they make all of their soaps, bath melts and ballistics, as well as see the online order team hard at work packing orders to send off all over Europe.

Some of the soap-making equipment

Freshly Poured Miranda

Soap Molds

The brand new 'Magnificent' soap ready to send out.

The online order stock room

Factory Kitchen Cupboards!

Mini Comforters ready to be packaged up and sent out to stores

The result of a staff training day - Hedgehogs made of Gold 'Fun'!

The original Lush shop: 29 High Street, Poole

Dry Ice fragrance demo in the Poole Store

The best part however… this morning, I actually got the chance to try my hand at making my very own Shower Gel during the first ever live Google hangout in the Lush Kitchen. I was joined by two of my favourite ladies in the beauty world, Natalie and Holly from the beauty team at Company Magazine. Together we re-created an old shower gel from the early 2000's called 'Back To Breakfast'.

The Lush Kitchen fridge... Stocked up with citrus fruits for making 'Back for Breakfast'

I also got the chance to chat to the head of the Digital team at Lush, son of the founders and product inventor, Jack Constantine, and learn a bit more about their new 'self-preserving' products. Although a large number of Lush products are already preservative-free, according to Jack, eliminating preservatives entirely is high on Lush's priority list and introducing preservative-free versions of their best selling body creams is a big step towards this goal.

Ready for labelling!

Trying not to spill the shower gel!

You can watch the full Google Hangout from the Lush Kitchen here:

I also got to take a few extra bottles of my 'Back For Breakfast' away with me to give away to 4 readers this week. If you'd like to win your own bottle, made with my own fair hands(!) all you have to do is:

Don't forget to leave your email address or twitter username as well, so I can get in touch if you win!

Finally, a massive thanks to all of the lovely people at Lush! It was such a lovely experience getting to know the people behind the products and learn a bit more about the company. It's certainly made me love the brand just a little bit more than before!

*The giveaway is open internationally. It closes at midnight GMT on Saturday 10th May 2014. I will email or tweet each winner to let them know they have won. You can enter as many times as you like before the closing date*